


no solace ever stills

by emptyricebowl



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Angst, M/M, no beta we die like men, open-ended, pre movie timeline, romance but only if you squint, with no real resolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24811348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emptyricebowl/pseuds/emptyricebowl
Summary: Tom, out of all of them, wanted Schofield to tell him something that made sense. Indeed, he'd had the same hopes. He also wanted to know what winning felt like.
Relationships: Tom Blake/William Schofield
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	no solace ever stills

The war was not always horrible. Tom was inclined to think this way, especially in the beginning. He left home with all of his schoolmates and then watched them die. They had all been convinced by the committee for wartime indoctrination that fighting on the western front was noble and just as any cause a man could pursue in his lifetime. The white feather was certainly a compelling argument, along with the notions associated with duty and honor and respect delivered in backhanded comments at the dinner table, and the girls who liked men in uniform. Tom was in school, and like all the others, he'd been swept away by the reckless haste that was the war's onset. 

He had been stupid. In the scheme of things, they all had been. No one could blame them. It was those who were in charge who were to blame, but pointing fingers did nothing and changed nothing. Fault became lost in translation. It was better to just carry on. And yet Tom could not help but be angry. 

The world was full of meaning before the trenches. It had become senseless. It had become senseless in the deaths of his brothers in arms, as well as in the face of the enemy, the grey blurs who hurled themselves from the parapet in a headlong muster of smoke and artillery fire. He had gone to a school that taught him what reason was. He had gone to a school that had taught him mathematics, geometry, statistics - the numbers of men who had simply become a quantifier to measure how bad it all was. It was not easy to grasp tragedy. The men who died were just that - numbers on a page. 

It rained for two weeks straight and the mud was so thick and so treacherous that there fewer victims to enemy fire and more from the mud that became a choking gully around their ranks - some fell and never rose, inexorably back into the ground as if some god inhaled them into its ancient womb absent of light or sound or sense or logic. In the face of this who would be borne up against it except those who shut their eyes and pretended they believed in their cause. 

When Schofield joined their rag-out company the rest of the soldiers had gotten all up in arms about treating him with the utmost respect. Schofield had fought in the Battle of the Somme and he had survived. He had a medal. He had saved lives. They wanted to know how much of a man he was, and he was a man, wasn't he? It did not matter that he was as young as the rest of them. They scrambled to shake his hand, begged him to tell them his story. Schofield was not the most articulate fellow, but Tom thought he tried his best anyway. 

Tom, out of all of them, wanted Schofield to tell him something that made sense. Indeed, he'd had the same hopes. He also wanted to know what winning felt like. 

Schofield recited an insincere speech while they all sat around a fire. It was only a speech in that they all were itching for boost in morale, but all other speech-like attributes were absent. It was a detailing of previous events as if read straight off a printed out report. Schofield's face was pale and miserable with a voice as thin and colorless as air. He did not look like a man who had succeeded. The men looked at each other and wondered if this was an object worthy of admiration. And why he did not look like the heroes in propaganda leaflets back home. They began to question what winning the war meant - what one would sacrifice. When it was finished, the men clapped half-heartedly and were silent, all sharing the same hollow look on their faces, accentuated by the gleam of the firelight. Schofield swallowed his rum, gave a vague nod, and departed for his tent. Tom was quick to follow. 

"None of them knew what you meant." 

Schofield stopped. He looked at Tom with a curious little flash of surprise on his face. This was the first time they'd spoken and it began with a provocative note in Tom's voice he'd meant to stifle. 

"No one asked any questions." 

Tom scoffed. "They didn't have a clue. You were talking about their sorry ends and now you're going to rest easy knowing you've gotten a good lark." 

Schofield studied him for a long moment, until Tom was forced to cant his gaze to his boots. "Are you upset because I told them the truth?"

"I'm upset because you've inspired them about nothing."

"What would you suggest, then? That I had told them."

"Well, you're a soldier, aren't you? They look up to you. You should've told them a story about something great and meaningful." 

"A war story," Schofield said, immediately discerning, amusement seeping into his voice. "That's what you wanted to hear."

Schofield nodded once to himself. Tom stood staring at him with his fists curled up at his sides because he had nothing much else to say. 

"You're quite good at it. I've heard you. If it's enough to convince me I'm sure you've managed to convince yourself." Schofield continued, "But I'll leave the story-telling to you."

He made to leave, but Tom rushed in front of him once more. "How do you stand it?"

Schofield gave him a puzzled look.

"If charging into battle is so senseless. Why do you seem alright? Why do you seem like you'd do it again without question? You're still here. You haven't been discharged. Even your accomplishments don't merit your release because you're just cannon fodder for a war you didn't even ask to fight. Are you not angry? Are you not upset? Why do you seem fine?" 

Schofield shrugged. "I don't dwell on it." 

A sharp gust of air suddenly whipped past them. It was winter. They drew their coats tighter around themselves. A rueful smile appeared on Schofield's lips as he gazed out into the moor. There were great ridges endlessly extended into the horizon, dark and desolate mountains against the haze of the setting sun. If Tom squinted, he made out the tapered points of treetops, still faintly gleaming. 

"What are men to rocks and mountains?" Schofield said, and it was barely a whisper on his tongue. If another blast of wind had passed his words would surely have been drowned out. 

Tom stared at him. He did not know if he'd gotten the answer he wanted. 

  
  


-

  
  


They were friends after that. Of course, they would, they were impelled to do so by what Tom, as he was still young and prone to such beliefs, thought was fate. He might have fought in battles where he saw more men die than he could count on his two hands, but something about Schofield made the more comforting qualities of the war assert themselves contingently. 

Tom and Schofield were rotated to the rear in spring. This meant long, tedious days of little substance. The sun was much brighter here - stupid, impossible irony. The trenches where no light shined on even the most stifling of days. 

Tom spent more time in the recreation tents playing cards and listening to all the officers tell their stories of which he was so fond of, or at least, had been. Schofield's words were like a constant, piercing jab in the gut. He was unsettled because he recognized their bravado and couldn't force himself to pretend anymore. It made him feel sick, and then frustrated at once at himself because everyone else was pinning their ears back and waiting anxiously for the finale - the pay-off, the triumph at the end where all the stumbling and hiccuping at the onset would be converted to something meaningful - an armistice or maybe even peace on fucking earth. 

Schofield spent his downtime reading. The other men, especially the new draftees, somewhat resented him for this. The charm had faded. Schofield was a reminder that winning meant nothing. He was more experienced than the rest of them but his eyes were vacant. When the men recognized it they cringed away, hiding behind their notions of duty and honor and respect and service and etcetera. They never said anything to his face at least, so that the gaping holes in their derision wouldn't be so conspicuous. 

Schofield would probably be amused by all of it. Why he never seemed bothered by anything, an impervious sensibility of which Tom was simultaneously frustrated by and intensely fascinated with and begrudgingly fond of. 

"Good afternoon, Corporal." 

Tom stood over Schofield, raising his two fingers in a mock salute. Schofield was lying against a tree. His hands were neatly folded in his lap. His expression likened to the immutable calm on a mild sea. His eyes opened, blinking up at Tom.

"Have I been called to the working party?" Schofield inquired. 

"No," Tom answered, settling down beside him. "Got sick of the war stories."

"I'm glad to be of use."

"No, it's not like that." 

Schofield raised an eyebrow. Tom was eager to change the subject. 

"What are you reading now?"

Schofield glanced down at the book resting on his crossed legs as if suddenly recalling it was there. His middle finger was still wedged between its pages, but the book was closed. 

"A novel," Schofield replied. "Hasn't much charmed me." 

"Why's that?"

"If I'm honest with you, and I feel like I can be. I haven't much interest in anything." 

Tom frowned. "Well, can't you find a better one to read?"

"It's not the book." Schofield gazed somewhere past Tom. "I don't know what it is." 

Tom followed Schofield's gaze. Across the moor, as it occurred, rising abruptly from flat, unremarkable grassland to immense snow-capped mountains. Then the contours of the land one after another gradually recessed into further obscurity. There was the grand sweep all laid out before them, quiet, supreme, a physical fact, and what were they? Tom was reminded of their first encounter. Their significance provoked such skepticism. Was the ego of soldiers and their war stories invulnerable to the drain of time? It was fascinating that merely admiring the landscape would cause such inquiries to strike him. 

Tom's eyes were tracing the mountaintops until his eyes strained and he was forced to twist back around. "I see you're brooding over it." 

Schofield's blue-gray eyes were trained on him, very hard and very clear. "What else is there to do aside from brood over how much you wish death would come sooner--." 

"You can't possibly think that."

"--so you can stop being reminded of the fact that once it comes it won't matter anyway."

"Of course it matters.

"Nothing matters, Blake." Schofield snapped. Tom was momentarily surprised. Schofield's one had never taken on such an edge, always dull and colorless. 

Both of them were silent for a long time. Tom studied Schofield with baleful eyes, unsure of what to say. There was that gray anger in his eyes, buried deep within him and unlikely to emerge unless under certain conditions where to bury it further would require being two or three sheets to the wind. It was not the first time he had perceived it. The quality of nothingness, as if all the bright flickers of the ego had been forfeited, and in their place, the id reduced down to its most fundamental inclinations. He was entirely absent. He was a machine that performed all the necessary steps of being alive until the next day, and the next, and the next, and did so without heat, without emotion, without fervor. He moved forward as if driven forth by a supreme and indiscriminate wind. He was carried along by a current, the riptide dragged him out to sea and Schofield must have known better to fight against it, but Tom was not sure Schofield would not let it drown him. 

"I always admired you." 

Schofield snorted quietly. "What for?"

"Because you aren't like the others." Tom twisted his fingers in his lap. "They like to play pretend. They're fed elaborate lies and are convinced that blind hatred is enough to rationalize the justness of their cause. They aren't any more skilled soldiers than they are skilled illusionists."

A beat.

"But you carry on decisively and forthrightly." Tom's fingers dug into the grass, absent-minded, tearing at it. "I've always admired your diligence. That's why they look up to you too. There isn't a more supreme force than complete indifference." 

"You're too young to..." Schofield shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut as if bearing some unfathomable pain. "You shouldn't think like that." 

"Why?" Tom stared at the other with insistence. "I feel like I've lived for a thousand years already." 

Schofield's face became very grim, his mouth spread into a white line. His head turned to the side, back at the expanse in the distance, as if he thought the right words would display themselves there. Again, Tom followed his gaze, because he wondered too what sort of thoughts could manifest as a result of this quiet and empty rumination. If he looked for long enough he began to conceive of himself in those valleys - somewhere other than here - instead of this particular vantage point beneath a spindly elm in the countryside of some nameless town. In those valleys, which were shrouded in fog misting in from the east, sensibility was reduced to an abstraction. Along with all other constructs and convictions, a soldier must keep tucked in his breast-pocket, close to the thrumming of his heart. Loyalty, duty, service, honor, valor, and other meaningless platitudes, etcetera. What were they to the lone sentinel between the seep declivities of mountains? All are of the dust and turn to dust again. 

Tom's mouth began to open so he could tell Schofield to forget everything he had just said, but when he turned Schofield was looking at him with a complicated expression on his face. 

"I wonder why Fate has chosen for us to meet here."

Tom smiled, sighed, pressing his face into his palms. "Maybe...maybe it will be better next time." 

"You mean, in another life?"

"Yes. In another life." 

  
  



End file.
